The present invention relates to methods for inducing sleep, without the use of drugs.
Sleep-problems play a key-role in a large number of brain disorders. For example, strokes and asthma attacks tend to occur more frequently due to changes in hormones, heart rate, breathing rate, and other changes associated with sleep. Neurons that control sleep interact closely with the immune system—sleep may help body conserve energy that the immune system needs to mount an attack. Sleep problems occur in almost all people with mental disorders, including those with depression and schizophrenia. A person with depression is often awake in the night and unable to get back to sleep. Extreme sleep deprivation can lead to a seemingly psychotic state of paranoia and hallucinations in an otherwise healthy person, and disrupted sleep can trigger episodes of mania-agitation and hyperactivity, to a person with manic depression.
The National Sleep Foundation's (NSF) sleep in America poll found that 74% of American adults experience sleep problems a few nights a week or more, 39% get less than seven hours of sleep each weeknight, and more than one in three (37%) are so sleepy during the day that it interferes with daily activities. An article ‘Counting sheep no aid to insomnia’ published in January 2002, on the findings of Oxford study on sleep, reported that “1 in 10 suffer from chronic insomnia and it is estimated that sleeplessness costs the US economy $35 billions a year . . . .” The brain requires a sleep-cycle, deep sleep (DS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, of about eight hours in a 24-hour day to function properly. A recent study at Harvard Medical School and University of California concludes“ . . . a lack of sleep causes the brain's emotional centers to dramatically overreact . . . (with) psychiatric disorders . . . (and) fractures the brain mechanisms that regulate key aspects of mental health . . . and, sleep appears to restore emotional brain's circuits.”
Currently, there are several prescription drugs available to aid sleep. They can shorten the time it takes to fall asleep and reduce awakenings, which adds to total time spent asleep. Possible side effects include feeling tired or drowsy the next day, memory loss, headache and problems with performance. Prescription sleeping pills can cause strange and potentially dangerous side effects. Those side effects can include dangerous allergic reactions and bizarre behaviors such as sleep eating, walking and driving, in which a person will drive a car while not fully awake and has no memory of doing so.